River of Southern Joy
by SydnieWren
Summary: Itachi and Shisui at the end of days. Incest.


**Hi all! I'm still on an Itachi streak, and I hope you like this. Please let me know what you think!**

**Warnings: sexual touching, voyeurism, incest.**

**Disclaimer: don't own.**

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All night fireflies drifted through the high grass outside his window. Sometimes, when he was deeply dreaming, he imagined that they had congregated in a brilliant mass just outside the glass, shining piercing light into his room.

But when he woke after those curious intervals, he found his window dark and the night wholly tranquil.

He lay in the dark and listened to the shrill chorus of cicadas, so rhythmic and airy it sometimes sank beneath the sound of the wind in the trees.

Midsummer itself seemed restless, but Itachi slept until mid-morning, waking to thick golden sun and the retreating traces of nightmares. He sat up slowly, raking his fingers through his hair. A patch of sunlight like liquid amber spread from his window to the far wall, illuminating rays of dust suspended in the air.

Each morning now had a peculiar power over him. They had taken on the eerie and sonorous quality of particularity, each subtly imparting that it would be the last of its kind that he would ever experience.

He rose and opened his window, inviting a meandering drift of warm, green-scented air. Depressions in the grass beneath his window collected pools of dew, and did not trouble him.

The floorboards were warm and swollen slightly with moisture. A soft creaking announced his emergence into the corridor outside his room, where the scent of rice and tea alerted him that his mother had been awake for sometime. As he approached the kitchen he heard the familiar music of her diligent work: her soft shoes shuffling on the tile, the clinking of dishes under the faucet, and the broken notes of a folksong, hummed quietly.

"Good morning," he greeted.

Mikoto glanced over her shoulder and, after a moment's consideration, smiled.

"Breakfast is ready," she announced. There was a remoteness to her tone that suggested agitation. Itachi knelt at the table and gazed up at her face as she bent to settle a bowl of rice and eggs before him.

"Is everything alright?"

Her lips temporarily met in a stern line.

"Don't be so serious," she answered, returning to the sink, "it's summertime. Everything is fine."

Itachi began to eat.

"Is Sasuke awake?" he asked at length.

"No," Mikoto replied, "not yet."

There was a short pause in her work. She shut the faucet off.

"Why don't you take him out today?"

"Where?"

"Any place, I suppose," she supplied, returning to the table with a cup and bowl for her younger son.

"He's a bit young to train so much," Itachi mused.

"Your father doesn't think so," she countered.

"It's only my opinion."

Mikoto laid the chopsticks down decisively, and stood upright, wiping her hands on her apron. They were damp and rosy-pink from the hot dishwater, and Itachi noted the whiteness of her knuckles as she gathered fabric between them.

"I don't really mind where you take him, so long as you take him out. When he's here, he runs around my feet all day, and I can barely get anything –"

Sasuke appeared in the doorway, and then mechanically sank into his place at the table.

Mikoto smiled tightly.

"Good morning, Sasuke-chan."

"Good morning," he yawned. He tested his tea with a fingertip before eating dutifully. Itachi rose and deposited his dishes in the sink, where Mikoto joined him to begin cleaning them.

"I'll take him fishing," he disclosed softly. Already he had a substantial few inches of height on his mother, who had never seemed as diminutive as she did just then, her graceful neck bent in the morning sunlight.

Sasuke had finished his meal and perked up, restless now that he was full.

"We're going fishing?" he pried. Itachi tapped the center of his forehead as he passed by.

"Get ready to go," he said.

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Sasuke carried their tackle and poles.

"Where are we going?" he asked, trotting along behind Itachi. He knew the path to the river well enough to know that this was not it.

"Shisui is coming with us," Itachi answered.

Sasuke seemed satisfied. It was a common occurrence, especially of late; their older cousin had been something of a fixture for as long as he could remember, and in the summertime, even more so.

Shisui did not live far from them. Itachi followed the path of snaking alleys by heart, arriving at the back door of Shisui's home with Sasuke in tow. He let the two of them in through the sliding door, and instructed his little brother to wait at the threshold.

Dim haze permeated the incense-scented halls. Itachi passed the sparse living room, where Shisui's mother appeared to be pressing flowers. She looked up at him vaguely, almost unseeing, and returned to her work.

Dust clung to his feet by the time he reached Shisui's door and knocked on the frame.

"Yeah?" Shisui's voice was muffled by the thin screen of paper emblazoned with a red-and-white fan.

"It's Itachi."

"Come in," Shisui called. Itachi slid the door open and closed it behind himself as his cousin dressed.

Shisui was older by roughly four years. He had been to Itachi what the former was now to Sasuke: someone whose expertise was always more developed, but whose time was not so consumed by adult responsibility that skills could not be shared. What Shisui had just perfected, Itachi was eternally still developing.

At the moment, that included the physical signals of young adulthood. As Shisui lifted his shirt over his head, Itachi watched the tight ridges of muscle stretch and relax over his ribs. Soft lines of shadow gathered in the angles of his hips, now framing a hard, flat expanse of abdomen.

"Sasuke's here," Itachi informed him. "We're going fishing."

"I'll go," he replied, "my pole is out back."

He caught Itachi's glance and flashed a lopsided grin at the double-entendre. Itachi looked away with a slight smirk. Circumstances lately were grim, but there was some satisfaction in the petty rebellion of sharing intimacy with the man who had been ordered to spy on him.

Sasuke still waited impatiently in the threshold, chasing a cricket around the porch with the tip of his fishing pole.

"Did you forget the bait?" Shisui teased. Sasuke straightened at once, smiling.

"No way!" he thrust the tackle box upwards by its yellow handle.

A well-used fishing pole leaned against the pale wall of the house, casting a sharp, angular shadow. Shisui slung it over his shoulder and set off behind his cousins, keeping pace with Itachi while Sasuke raced ahead.

"Any news?" Itachi asked furtively.

Shisui shook his head.

"Nothing," he muttered.

Every day, Itachi hoped desperately that there would be some capitulation, that the elders in his family would think better of their designs, and that he would be released from what presently he thought of as his doom, but could otherwise have been called his destiny.

But the summer day was still, relentless. Sunshine poured down directly above them, white and pure. A thin sheen of sweat rose underneath his black clothes, and he swept his hand across his forehead to wipe some of it away.

They followed a dirt path off the paved road down to the sloping banks of the river. At some bends the ravine walls rose high around them, and they crossed over smooth, wet rocks to make their way to a gradually flattening plane where they could sit among the reeds and cast their lines.

Sasuke planted himself in the sand and stationed the tackle box between his ankles, then went about methodically baiting their hooks. He worked with the utmost concentration, his brows furrowed, his eyes sharp and alert. Itachi watched him from the crest of the bank, where he and Shisui had settled down for the shade of the reeds.

"They were patrolling again outside my house last night," Itachi said softly, his voice no louder than the breeze in the cattails, "it's making my mother nervous."

"I know," Shisui submitted. "I was patrolling the night before last."

He smiled sidelong at Itachi despite the circumstances.

"I know," Itachi echoed, meeting his cousin's glance.

"You saw me?" Shisui probed.

"I felt your chakra."

"You knew I was there, didn't you? I thought so…"

Itachi threaded his fingers in the withered grass and nodded. His hair fell forward to shade his face.

"What if it hadn't been me?" Shisui teased, leaning close to murmur in Itachi's ear.

"It _was_ you," the other muttered.

"Could've been anybody…"

"It was you."

Sasuke rooted his feet in the loose earth of the riverbank, arched his back, and cast his line into the swiftly flowing waters of the river. Itachi watched his hook sail a few yards downstream, where a small wake swirled around it. Sunlight glinted off the silvery bodies of fish as they twirled and dipped beneath the water's surface.

"You liked that?" Shisui went on, his voice low. Itachi shuddered despite the oppressive warmth. A flush spread over his neck and shoulders. He sat back on the heels of his hands, and then reached up to tug his shirt over his head. Shisui's eyes widened momentarily, and then he followed suit.

The two lay back in the grass as Sasuke reeled in his first catch. He was single-minded in his approach to fishing, undertaking it more as a mission than a hobby. As soon as his first fish was discarded on the shore, he set about baiting another hook.

"Did you?" Itachi replied at length. Shisui seemed to have forgotten the question. His long eyelashes settled against the sunburnt tops of his cheeks as he lay still in the grass, the high reeds swaying around him. After a still moment, he turned lazily onto his side, and settled his hand on the center of Itachi's stomach.

His face grew pensive, but when Itachi met his eyes, his expression lightened somewhat, and took on a cast of mischief.

"Sasuke can see us," Itachi warned blankly. Shisui's glance flickered briefly to the riverbank, where the boy resolutely faced the water. White crests rose on the current where it rounded a bend in the ravine, and Sasuke stepped out into the shallower water to cool his feet and further his line.

"He's preoccupied," Shisui pointed out.

"Until he gets bored," Itachi countered.

Shisui's fingers trailed down the center of Itachi's stomach until they met with the waistband of his pants. Despite his reservations, Itachi arched his hips obligingly, and Shisui loosened the button and zipper to slip his hand inside.

It had been like this for sometime, both of them reaching for one another in spare moments of privacy, because there was nothing else to hold onto. Itachi drew his knees up slightly as he expelled a breath through his teeth.

_It's different for girls, _Shisui had said to him once, someplace in his memory. It was before things had disintegrated. Itachi had been newly admitted to ANBU, and had to be warned of what he would see.

_Girls have to spread their legs. It's different for them. It's more personal. They can get knocked up. They have to spread their legs open, too, so it's more like…_

He had never said what it was more like. But Itachi knew the gist: he just didn't believe it. When Shisui's fingers circled his penis and tightened, he did not feel invulnerable or impersonal. His blood surged to his sex, and something in him ached vaguely for something more.

With his eyes closed the angles of Itachi's cheeks seemed more elegant than severe. He twisted in the grass as his pulse quickened and his climax built.

"Shisui," he breathed. His fingers twisted around the rough stalks of reeds. Downy fibers drifted down from their feathery stems and scattered over his pale stomach, and Shisui spread a thick droplet of fluid from the smooth tip of Itachi's penis down to the shaft.

Itachi's eyes opened wide. Overhead, black crows wheeled and turned, their shadows crossing over his writhing body.

Shisui's hand stilled only when the last expulsion of white liquid concluded in a slow drip. He withdrew, cracking his knuckles, and watched Itachi's chest rise and fall.

Dull, pulsing soundlessness receded, and Itachi turned to look at Shisui.

"Do you want me to?" he asked, nodding to his cousin's clothed erection. Shisui glanced downward as though he hadn't noticed it.

"Yeah," he said, moving closer in the dry grass.

He shivered when Itachi touched him because Itachi's touch was uncommonly gentle for a shinobi. His fingers traced and lingered over the shadows of veins, and tenderly rolled the tightly gathered foreskin, urging it up against the head.

Shisui swallowed dryly.

"Why do you look?" he whispered, his hips bucking against Itachi's hand.

"Why don't you look?" Itachi returned.

A balmy breeze drifted through the reeds. Sasuke had now advanced into the deeper, colder water. It swirled around his knees and upward toward his thighs, but he was transfixed by the iridescent bodies of fish teeming beneath its surface. With slow, dreamy steps, he moved into the fast current.

It took Shisui longer because he was older, and because he resisted. Itachi had previously been subject to the expectations of young men: he, too, had wanted to last longer, had wanted to some day draw things out with a lover. But he had lately come to the conclusion that time was short, and had dispensed with patience. Shisui, ever the optimist, remained at least half in denial.

"You watched me," Itachi reminded him.

"You wanted me to," Shisui managed, though his voice wavered and his throat tensed.

_Maybe this is love, _Itachi thought, watching his cousin's face. It occurred to him that he would likely have felt differently under different circumstances, if the end hadn't been so near, or if there had been any other living person to share his burden with.

In the midst of that thought he followed the thick fullness of Shisui's eyelashes to the dark eyes shaded beneath them. Shisui was peering ahead, though his breath still came quick and his hips still moved in time with Itachi's grip.

Itachi followed his gaze down to the riverbank, where Sasuke was no longer.

In a single motion Itachi was on his feet, dust and grass giving purchase to his heels as he sprinted downward toward the river, leaping over rocks and driftwood.

"Sasuke!" he shouted, and his heart beat cold and tight when he was met with only an echo. He rushed into the water without a glance backward, and moved with the current with preternatural grace.

A bank of jagged rocks speared upward a few yards ahead, and in a crevice Itachi noted a few shreds of black cloth emerging through the white rapids rushing between.

Itachi's hair flowed around his neck and shoulders in thick black ropes as he secured himself to a narrow rock with the crook of his elbow, and dove into the crevasse in search of his brother. His hand made contact with a shred of cloth, and he emerged for breath, gasping; when he submerged himself again, he felt a cold, smooth limb.

Sasuke spasmed as if in seizure. Itachi jerked him close, looping an arm around his narrow midsection, and then hoisted him over his shoulder. The boy's bones felt delicate and nearly weightless under his cool, white skin, and for a few panic-stricken moments, Itachi was sure he was dead.

He lay Sasuke down on the sandy bank and knelt over him to listen for breath. Shisui approached slowly, his black shirt dotted with dead grass.

"Is he okay?" he asked.

Itachi rose immediately and dashed at him, balling his fists in the collar of his shirt.

"You saw he was gone!" he hissed, "You saw, and you didn't say anything!"

A flicker of color at the edges of Itachi's irises caught Shisui's attention at once, and he reached up to circle the other's wrists.

"Calm down," he commanded.

"You saw!" Itachi snarled, bearing his knuckles into the other's collarbone.

"Don't you want to spare him all this?" Shisui's palms flattened against the other and forced him back in the pursuant moment of shock.

Itachi turned on his heel to the sound of sputtering. Sasuke's small body contorted and then loosened as he coughed.

"Sasuke," Itachi murmured, returning to his brother with little regard for what Shisui had said.

"I lost my pole," Sasuke wheezed. His brows knit together and he lifted his head to the best of his ability to glance at the river. After a brief second, he let it drop back into the forgiving sand.

"Don't worry about that," Itachi admonished, "turn over, cough."

He watched his brother spit water and bile onto the riverbank, and patted his back intermittently to help him release it.

Shisui mutely retrieved Itachi's shirt, and wrapped the fish Sasuke had set aside on the shore in it like a sling. He waited for Itachi to gather his limp brother onto his back, and then they began the walk home in silence.

As they emerged from the brush back onto the thoroughfare, Itachi spoke.

"It's all for him," he said.

Sasuke's cheek was damp against his shoulder. He shuddered, now and then, either from tears or the cool breezes accompanied by waning daylight.

"Right," Shisui agreed softly.

Their black shadows stretched out behind them, disappearing much further down the road, where the horizon grew dark and starless.

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